Sociology and social work

Interpersonal reality monitoring: judging the sources of other people's memories

Article Abstract:

The effects of different types of content details on individual judgments about the sources of other people's memories were investigated. Three experiments were conducted to assess whether perceptual or emotional detail influences the believability of reports not contradicted by other reports as well as the interrelationship between people's preconceptions about the speakers' intentions and the level of reported detail. Results showed systematic differences in the types of details used by both high- and low-suspicion individuals to make their judgments.

The cued activation of attachment relational schemas

Article Abstract:

The cued activation of acceptance and rejection expectations as a function of chronic attachment orientation has been assessed through a lexical decision task. Subjects were asked to visualize relationships in which they were noncontingently accepted by another person while being administered repeated computer presentations of distinctive tone sequences. Results indicate that people high on the preoccupied orientation activate rejection contingencies while people high on the secure orientation activate acceptance contingencies.

Effects of distraction on interpersonal expectancy effects: a social interaction test of the cognitive busyness hypothesis

Article Abstract:

The hypothesis that cognitive busyness enhances susceptibility to expectancy effects was supported by research results. Cognitively busy perceivers were more likely to respond negatively to targets for whom they had negative expectancies, whereas non-busy perceivers were more prone to compensate for negative expectancies. Thus, cognitive busyness functions as a situational moderator for prediction of expectancy effects.